HUMANITY

Two Girls I Met Ruined My New Year Vacation. Despite That I want to meet Them Again and Again. Forever.

You have to go through it to feel it

2017 was an emotionally challenging year with family deaths, career issues and health problems.

So, I and my wife, Moon, decided to take a break during the new year period.

We headed to the Canary Islands of Spain.

It did not disappoint me. Lying serenely on the beautiful beaches with beautiful people, great food and colourful shops around and enjoying the sublime sunshine with 23° temperature during the winters, I could not have asked for more.

But I did get more. Of something very peculiar.

It took me through one of the most surreal and emotional experiences. It’s difficult to put into words unless you experience it making this a very difficult article to pen down.

When I tried to explain it to my wife, my voice choked. I struggled to keep my eyes from welling up.

Yes, this all happened when I was on those beautiful beaches enjoying the luxuries around and dreaming of my 2018 goals.

The culprits were women

They were two women or maybe girls…I now don’t even know which category they would fall under after what I witnessed.

They were constantly in front of me; my eyes were transfixed on them.

I prefer to call them girls.

Mariam and Laila.

That’s what their names were.

And after every few glances towards them, after every few pages I turned, I had to halt, take a deep breath and look towards the sea thinking about them. This world. Us.

Bestselling author Khaled Hosseini’s book, A Thousand Splendid Suns about these two Afghan girls against the backdrop of the Taliban tore into my heart and moved me to an extent that no other book had ever been able to do so.

The book is a fiction but it reflects real events that happened before and during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It shows the plight of women in the name of social norms, extreme patriarchy, and war.

Two little innocent girls who had simple dreams.

One adored her rich father, wished to be a part of his family and grow up with her sisters and brothers. Society ridiculed her as “harami” (illegitimate child) but she faced it all, as she had her loving father on her side. She waited, dressed in her best dress to be picked up by her father, only to be discarded and deserted most disrespectfully by the only person she thought she was closest to.

The other girl, bright, smart and ambitious, dreamt about always being with her best childhood friend and lover and growing up to become “someone” with the support of her intellectual father. The war makes her friend disappear for good and the bombs leave her with the memory of her father’s headless torso.

Both lose everything by the age of 15 and at that same age are married away to men who are 30 to 40 years older; who kicks and punches them most brutally, at the slightest or no provocation.

They gulp down everything without ever retaliating; obeying without showing any dissent.

Pregnancy, miscarriages, starvation everything happens to them through their tender age till the point of life where white strands of their hair start appearing — their age and years go pass by them just like that through the filthy route; drifting them far far away from those simple dreams that they used to live by once.

Beautiful souls who come into this world with tender steps and innocent dreams, who just want to be loved and taken care of, grow up only to find their souls and bodies being destroyed and reduced to the ugliest of states by this world that we have created.

Thinking like a child, if only I had a machine to fly back in time to meet the young Mariam; to protect the young Laila. So that I could give them back what had always belonged to them — their dignity and childhood. Forever.

Mariam and Laila were the greatest gifts that I could have got for the New Year.

There were many lessons that I learnt in 2017, but these two lessons that I derived from Hosseini’s book easily stand out.

First, it feels guilty to the bone that we complain about things like food in a restaurant not being up to expectations or the weather being bad or not having the desired car. When in some other parts of the world, lives hang by threads and people are treated like animals.

Barring the deaths of near and dear ones and the adverse effects of health and mental trauma, I think we should not have any bloody reason to complain about mundane things in our day-to-day lives.

Second, the end of the story is both heroic and painful. Positive and at the same time sad.

Almost like my holiday — the beautiful beach in front of me and this book in my hand.

I finished the last chapters on the plane and this time I gave in. Eyes welled up and cheeks got wet. I could not master my voice to narrate the last parts of the story to my wife.

The only words that had shakenly come out of my mouth were,

Humanity is the biggest thing on earth, Moon. Kindness towards our fellow humans is the biggest thing on earth. Bigger than any social norms, religions or traditions.

With that, I hope we can all try our best to sustain and nurture it within ourselves in every step of our lives.

I hope no author will ever have to write such stories again owing to such dreadful events.

I hope all the Mariams and Lailas who come into this world get to live a life of love, freedom, and respect. And of never-ending dreams.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A big bow to Khaled Hosseini for creating such a masterpiece. And a big bow to the people of Afghanistan for having endured so much.

Originally published on my LinkedIn blog in 2018. This a slightly updated version.